Rock Plaza Central, for being so far from its Canadian home, sure spent a lot of time in eastern Iowa and western Illinois the last weekend in March. The newly signed Yep Roc roster members loitered here for three days before they trekked back to Toronto. They played a string of shows with our buddies and yours Death Ships, the first of which was actually at the club 10 feet from the door of our studio here in downtown Rock Island – the Rock Island Brewing Company – on a Friday night. The next night, they played the late show at The Picador in Iowa City during the Mission Creek Music Festival – Midwest version. Rock Plaza Central was preceded that night – a night of hail and odd, but typical Midwestern spring weather — by the incredible David Karsten Daniels, whom they missed that night but met the next morning when they visited us as David and his wonderful group of house guest-worthy mates were just finishing up their own early morning, coffee-time session. When David’s session ended, we found the Rock Plaza crew hanging out in their van outside. Entering the studio, they instinctively did what we’d like to encourage every band we have in to do: they did things they would never have done before. We don’t always suggest this because we’d like to idea to come – as it did with these guys – from them. We’d rather not encroach. Chris Eaton and team walked in an immediately picked up an instrument that they didn’t normally play. He explains below all of the particulars, but it wound up being a combination of previous sessions with SOUND Team and The Elected, both of which involved significantly different arrangements and new instruments explored. The a cappella of “I Am An Excellent Steel Horse” was a first for the Daytrotter recording sessions. We don’t consider the piano really counting as accompaniment. You can argue, sure. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and Eaton successfully peddled me copies of his two novels (_The Grammar Architect_ and The Inactivist) – which he stored in a cooler – right there on the sidewalk. – Sean Moeller
 
First song 
Mount Up and Ride (Rock Plaza Central) [3.93MB] [1499 downloads]


– original version appears on _The World Was Hell to Us_ 
We literally walked into the studio, grabbed instruments we wouldn’t normally play, and just started playing this song. I often refer to it as our heavy metal song, the way we normally play it live now. But this was different. I used an electric guitar for the first time ever, with a fun trebly feedback on it, Fiona (violin) played bass, Scott (bass) played drums, Blake (drums) played cello, Don (mandolin) also played an electric guitar. And I can’t even remember what John played.  
 
Second song
Stereo Trucks (Rock Plaza Central) [4.63MB] [1443 downloads]


— unreleased 
This is a really old song that I’ve recorded a number of different ways with a number of different musicians, but never put on an album. This one features us on similar instruments to the last song, I recall. I spent a summer living above a pool hall with a balcony that overlooked a back alley. And I used to write songs out there while watching some local youth smoke up behind the laundromat. There’s a good chance that one of them may have been the woman I later married.  There was also, that summer, a number of trucks that used to cruise the town blaring classic rock. One had “The Heartbeat of the Maritimes” painted on the side. I wrote many love songs to that truck. At the end of that summer, the couple who owned it split up. She got the truck, and fixed the airbrushing to read “The Heart break of the Maritimes.”
 
Third song 
Record Body Count (Rock Plaza Central) [1.95MB] [1470 downloads]


– unreleased
The night before we did these sessions, one of Canada’s greatest bands, and the one big influence that I think the entire band shares — The Rheostatics, played their last show ever in Toronto. Although never huge outside of Canada, it’s hard to imagine most bands people have heard of outside of Canada not having been influenced by them. And they were big enough that people flew in from all over North American and probably further to see them. This was the first song I ever heard by them, from their first widely-released album _ Melville_. We’d never really played it before attempting it at a gig the night before. Don is singing lead because he knew all the words. 
 
Fourth song
I am an Excellent Steel Horse (Rock Plaza Central) [2.55MB] [1489 downloads]


– original version appears on _Are We Not Horses?_ 
We had another song on the album originally (the planned album) that was entirely a cappella, but we never got around to recording anything but a demo for it. Every so often when we play this one live, it creeps closer and closer to that, so we thought we’d do it here. With a little help from the piano to keep us together.